Policies and Procedures Manual Volunteer - Cheekwood Botanical ...

Striving to establish their coffee as a prestige product, they convinced Nashville's MaxwellHouse hotel to use the coffee exclusively in its restaurants and later acquired the use of thehotel's name for marketing the coffee. Sold as Maxwell House Coffee with the slogan "Goodto the Last Drop" (allegedly praise lavished by President Theodore Roosevelt when he visitedthe Maxwell House in 1907), the coffee became immensely popular and eventually gained astaggering one-third of the American coffee market. In 1928 Joel Cheek sold the coffeebusiness to Postum Company, later General Foods, for a reported sum of $42 million,enriching family members who had invested in the company. Leslie Cheek took his portion ofthis windfall, approximately $1.25 million, and used it over the next three years for theconstruction of his lavish country house estate, Cheekwood.Making a Mansion a HomeSoon after joining his father's grocery firm, in the early1890’s, Leslie Cheek had met Mabel Wood. Mabel, thedaughter of Louis and Huldah Warfield Wood, grew upClarksville, Tennessee. The couple married in 1896. Theybuilt their first house on West End Avenue in Nashville(near today's Vanderbilt University). Their son, LeslieCheek, Jr., was born in 1908 and their daughter, HuldahWarfield Cheek, followed in 1915.With their income secured by the proceeds from thePostum sale, they hired New York residential andlandscape architect, Bryant Fleming, and gave him controlover every detail - from landscaping to interior furnishings.The result was a limestone mansion and extensive formalgardens inspired by the grand English houses of the 18 thcentury.Bryant Fleming was based in Wyoming, New York and latermoved to Ithaca, New York. He had designed many of Nashville's new grand residences andpublic spaces including part of the Warner Parks. Fleming proposed a number of house plans tothe Cheeks before they settled on an English country house plan inspired by the great estates ofthe eighteenth century. To finalize the design and hunt for antiques, Fleming accompanied theCheeks on a buying trip to Great Britain, a typical practice of the wealthy in the 1920s. Theypurchased doors, mantels, ironwork, chandeliers, and furnishings from old aristocratic houses.5